Thread: South Padre Island / Precinct One Corruption & Border Wa

Mexican drug cartels rig elections to take over U.S. cities
Posted on Tuesday, June 27 @ 12:48:06 EDTÂ*
Topic:Â*Illegal Immigrant Gangs Terrorists
<gang1.gif>Gang expert backs Tancredo charges: Entire Cities Under Control of Mexican Gangs

WASHINGTON – Rep. Tom Tancredo's charge that Mexican drug cartels are buying up legitimate businesses in U.S. cities to launder money and using some of the proceeds to win local mayoral and city council seats for politicians who can shape the policies and personnel decisions of their police forces, has been backed up by a veteran gang investigator.Â*

Topics: Felix drug cartel, Fuentes cartel, illegal immigration, gangs, law enforcement, drugs, money, politics, Mexican, city campaigns, local corruption, MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, MS 13

June 27, 2006
By Joseph FarahÂ*
World Net Daily

Richard Valdemar, a retired sergeant with the L.A. County sheriff's department and a longtime member of a federal task force investigating gang activity, went beyond the charges made by Tancredo, the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus who has led the fight to secure America's southern border.Â*

In fact, he cited first-hand experience in investigating attempts to take over seven cities in Los Angeles County – Southgate, Lynwood, Bell, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Hawaiian Gardens and Huntington Park.Â*

He also told WND in an exclusive interview that he has since become aware of similar efforts by Mexican drug cartels throughout the Southwest – in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.Â*

The stunning disclosures substantiate claims made by Tancredo in his new book, "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security," in which he exposes what he has learned from meetings with law enforcement authorities regarding a concerted effort by the Mexican mafia and drug cartels to extend its corruptive influence in urban areas dominated by illegal alien populations.Â*

Tancredo says some of these small cities have become hostile and dangerous places for legitimate law enforcement officials. Valdemar agrees, saying the sophisticated technique being employed in the U.S. was "invented in Mexico."Â*

Valdemar, the grandson of legal Mexican immigrants and now a consultant to law enforcement agencies across the country on gang activity, explains how the operations work.Â*

"In the typical scenario, a wealthy Mexican immigrant opens a business in a small town," he says. "It could be a very nice Mexican restaurant. He's well-dressed, speaks English, seemingly a real gentleman. He gets involved in the community. His business welcomes police officers with discounts. He makes friends with city officials and other businessmen. No one has any idea where his money comes from – the Mexican drug cartels."Â*

Valdemar says the agent of the cartels often sets up other businesses – including the sale of cheap used tires and used autos. These businesses are used almost exclusively as fronts for laundering money.Â*


Then he begins targeting political power in the town. When election time rolls around, Valdemar says, he sponsors – directly or indirectly – a number of candidates for the city council with the express purpose of winning a majority of seats for his handpicked operatives. Some of the candidates are simply in place to level baseless accusations against incumbents, while others keep above the fray, positioning themselves for victory.Â*

As soon as they take power, the new majority fires the city attorney and names a replacement. Often the second city official to go is the city manager. Both of these moves are designed to cover up the illicit activities that will follow.Â*

City contracts for trash collection and other services are given to friendly businesses – also in league with the cartel. Regulations on auto-repair businesses and alcohol sales are lifted – again, making it easier for cartel-tied businesses to operate more freely. Gambling ordinances are changed to permit casinos and bingo parlors. Loan sharking, prostitution and increased drug business follow – all of which increase revenues for the cartels and power for their agents in the city.Â*

Valdemar says very few prosecutions are successful because of the wealth and political ties of those involved. The situation in the Southwest is grave, he says, and the problem is spreading nationwide.Â*

"We lost California," the Arizona resident says. "That's why I don't live there any more."Â*

Tancredo, who blew the whistle on the growing power of the Mexican drug cartels and Mexican mafia in his book, "In Mortal Danger," explains who is behind the plot.Â*

"The Tijuana-based Felix drug cartel and the Juarez-based Fuentes cartel began buying legitimate business in small towns in Los Angeles County in the early 1990s," he writes. "They purchased restaurants, used-car lots, auto-body shops and other small businesses. One of their purposes was to use these businesses for money-laundering operations. Once established in their community, these cartel-financed business owners ran for city council and other local offices. Over time, they were able to buy votes and influence in an effort to take over the management of the town. They wanted to create a comfort zone from which they could operate without interference from local law enforcement."Â*

Tancredo, now a powerful force within Congress for opposing amnesty plans for illegal aliens and for promoting tougher border security measures, points in his book to the L.A. County city of Bell Gardens – where corrupt elected officials under the influence of drug lords actually tried to shut down the police department.Â*

"City officials who would not cooperate with the Mexican-born city manager were forced out of office," he writes. "Eventually, the L.A. County attorney's office moved in, and the city manager was prosecuted on charges of corruption. Unfortunately, Bell Gardens was only the tip of the iceberg. Other Los Angeles suburbs – including Huntington Park, Lynwood and Southgate – became targets for the cartels."Â*

Tancredo, too, cites similar efforts under way to undermine law and order by Mexican criminal gangs in Texas, Arizona and elsewhere.Â*

"The corruption spreading from south of the border is not confined to Southern California," he writes. "In Cameron County, Texas, the former sheriff and several other officials were recently convicted of receiving drug-smuggling bribes. In Douglas, Arizona – where the international border runs down the middle of the town and divides it from its sister city of Agua Prieta, Mexico – the mayor's brother was discovered to have a tunnel from one of his rental properties going into Mexico."Â*

Tancredo reports he has had confidential briefings with top officials in big-city law enforcement who say there are entire cities under the virtual control of Mexican criminal street gangs and their associated businesses, in some cases, making it dangerous for county, state and national law enforcement officers to venture in and rendering any interdepartmental cooperation impossible.Â*

This under-reported aspect of the immigration and border problem is just one of the reasons Tancredo believes the U.S., as a nation, is "in mortal danger" as the debate over solutions rages on in Washington.Â*

Throughout "In Mortal Danger," Tancredo, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the border security issue in the nation's capital, tells the whole story of the threats facing the nation, the solutions within its grasp and his own personal quest to awaken the political establishment to the seething discontentment gripping America as a result of illegal immigration.Â*

Tancredo warns that the country is on a course to the dustbin of history. Like the great and mighty empires of the past, he writes, superpowers that once stretched from horizon to horizon, America is heading down the road to ruin.Â*

English historian Edward Gibbon, in penning his classic "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (ironically published in the year America's Founding Fathers declared independence from Great Britain), theorized that Rome fell because it rotted from within. It succumbed to barbarian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue, its citizens became lazy and soft, hiring barbarian mercenaries to defend the empire because they were unwilling to defend it themselves.Â*

Tancredo says America is following in the tragic footsteps of Rome.Â*

Living up to his reputation for candor, Tancredo explains how the economic success and historical military prowess of the United States has transformed a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles of right and wrong into an overindulgent, self-deprecating, immoral cesspool of depravity.Â*

His recipe for turning things around?Â*

Without strong, moral leadership, without a renewed sense of purpose, without a rededication to family and community, without shunning the race hustlers and pop-culture sham artists, without protecting borders, language and culture, the nation that once was "the land of the free and home of the brave" and the "one last best hope of mankind" will repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the past, he writes.Â*

Tancredo, born and raised in Colorado, represents Colorado's 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to his election to Congress in 1998, Tancredo worked as a schoolteacher, was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1976, was appointed by President Reagan as the secretary of education's regional representative in 1981, and served as president of the Independence Institute. He serves on the International Relations Committee, the Resources Committee and the Budget Committee, and is the chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. Tancredo and his wife, Jackie, reside in Littleton, Colo.Â*

Problems, questions, or comments? Please send Feedback to William Gheen at WilliamG@alipac.us


Paid for by Americans for Legal Immigration AMERICANS FOR LEGAL IMMIGRATION PAC
Post Office Box 30966, Raleigh, NC 27622-0966
Tel: (919) 787-6009 Toll Free: (866) 703-0864
FEC ID:Â*C00405878

Well, why are they griping about immigrants when we have almost 26 million Americans unemployed and millions of them along the Gulf Coast? Advertise your jobs!! Let our unemployed workers know you have work available! If they need some training, provide it. Instead of wailing for more immigrants, wail for drill baby drill and a FairTax, so you can reduce your petrol costs and increase the net expendable income of your customers .. with more money in their pockets, they'll eat out more and look for the better food like Gulf Shrimp instead of imported shrimp.

My goodness! What are they thinking down there in the Gulf? Wake Up, stop whining about immigrant workers when there are millions of American workers available on the Gulf Coast, from the tip of Texas to the tip of Florida.

Holy Mackerel, oops, I mean HOLY SHRIMP, what is wrong with you people!!

Judy, you couldn't be more correct; unfortunately, many of the business owners in Port Isabel & South Padre Island will ONLY hire illegals--they work for below minimum wage and are willing to walk to South Padre Island from the slums of Laguna Heights, where they live in conditions unacceptible everywhere else in the United States--because other cities have to follow building codes;

--Pennies From Heaven, Politicians From Hell. . .



Illegal immigrants will live in squalor and be happy to receive much less than minimum wage--and the powers that control this SOUTHERN MOST OCEAN PORT bordering Mexico do not want anyone from up North to permnently move into this Precinct because the new comers might question the illegal casinos or constant drug activity;

The new comers might wonder OUTLOUD why the Border Patrol does not start at the RESORTS on the beach, and work their way inland checking for work visas;

Start with the resort resturant cooks and table bussers who speak NO ENGLISH and are 19 years old; or that kid painting the outside of the tourist t-shirt shop who also speaks NO ENGLISH; or the elderly lady behind the counter who also speaks almost NO ENGLISH;

Where is the border patrol? Oh yea, this is the Ochoa Fiefdom--no border patrol needed--the Ochoas will protect America. . .

. . .with pennies from heaven.

And on South Padre Island with the owner of the Radison Resort also being the Town of South Padre Island city attorney, you will not see much investigation as to who is cleaning the resorts with legal work visas.

The richest get richer, and the illegal immigrants clean their castles, and walk home to their slums--you can witness this scenario EVERYDAY on South Padre Island if you choose to wake up, open your eyes, lift up those designer sunglasses and actually look and see who is walking to and from South Padre Island at the beginning and end of each day.

http://www.spiforum.org/spiforum/showthread.php?t=1985

Originally Posted by SPILive

Judy, you couldn't be more correct; unfortunately, many of the business owners in Port Isabel & South Padre Island will ONLY hire illegals--they work for below minimum wage and are willing to walk to South Padre Island from the slums of Laguna Heights, where they live in conditions unacceptible everywhere else in the United States--because other cities have to follow building codes;

--Pennies From Heaven, Politicians From Hell. . .



Illegal immigrants will live in squalor and be happy to receive much less than minimum wage--and the powers that control this SOUTHERN MOST OCEAN PORT bordering Mexico do not want anyone from up North to permnently move into this Precinct because the new comers might question the illegal casinos or constant drug activity;

The new comers might wonder OUTLOUD why the Border Patrol does not start at the RESORTS on the beach, and work their way inland checking for work visas;

Start with the resort resturant cooks and table bussers who speak NO ENGLISH and are 19 years old; or that kid painting the outside of the tourist t-shirt shop who also speaks NO ENGLISH; or the elderly lady behind the counter who also speaks almost NO ENGLISH;

Where is the border patrol? Oh yea, this is the Ochoa Fiefdom--no border patrol needed--the Ochoas will protect America. . .

. . .with pennies from heaven.

And on South Padre Island with the owner of the Radison Resort also being the Town of South Padre Island city attorney, you will not see much investigation as to who is cleaning the resorts with legal work visas.

The richest get richer, and the illegal immigrants clean their castles, and walk home to their slums--you can witness this scenario EVERYDAY on South Padre Island if you choose to wake up, open your eyes, lift up those designer sunglasses and actually look and see who is walking to and from South Padre Island at the beginning and end of each day.

That is so sad, SPILive. And then you take that very same scenario you describe so well on South Padre Island and spread it across the United States and it's no wonder we're bankrupt and the latest Banana Republic on the Global Block.

October 6, 2009
Bustinza v. Perez et al TX Southern Tagle Civil Rights Prisoner Civil Rights
Petitioner:Â*Rogelio R. BustinzaÂ*Respondent:Â*Orlando Perez, Paul Posada, Ernesto Rubio
Â*
Valle Iglesias v. Watkins TX Southern Tagle Deportation Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus (federa
Petitioner:Â*Carlos Valle IglesiasÂ*Respondent:Â*Michael Watkins
Â*
Zamora Camacho v. Cameron County, Texas et al TX Southern Tagle Civil Rights Prisoner Civil Rights
Petitioner:Â*Martin Zamora CamachoÂ*Respondent:Â*Cameron County, Texas, Cameron County Sheriff's Department, Omar Lucio

Judy, once again you cannot be more correct; the richest feudal lords create spider webs with their wealth, and greedily devour everything they can with NO regard for anyone but themselves;

Case in point, if you were an illegal immigrant worker on a Port Isabel shrimp boat, and saw something you did not go along with morally; and you mysteriously died, it would be Precinct One Justice of the Peace Benito Ochoa's job to officially determine how you died;


. . .grandfather always advised, "Know your enemy. . ."

Paul Cunningham is the Town of South Padre Island City Attorney; and he is the attorney for the Economic Development Corporation; and has represented both buyers and sellers in land exchanges between the city and others--often in questionable roles, maybe legal, but definately to his own profitability--and his decisions make profit for him as the owner of the Radison Resort;

While 10% of America is looking for a job, this guy has more than he can spend--and it is not enough. . .

American shrimpers in Ft. Myers Beach were rough and tumble folks, but today the fleet sits idle. Talking with a fleet owner when diesel was costing them nearly $5.00 a gallon, he said that wasn't the only slap in the face American shrimpers had gotten: the business in Brownsville (where he had property the fleet could run to to shelter from weather) had been taken over by Vietnamese immigrants at the end of that war.
About 88 percent of shrimp in this country is farm-raised from China, India, Brazil, Thailand and a few others that are basically dumping it here, according to an article by Wall Street Journal.
Few realize that shrimp do not survive by farming them without serious antibiotics like chloraphemicol. The largest purchaser of this antibiotic-laden shrimp is Darden Restaurants, owner of Red Lobster and Olive Garden.
After Hurricane Katrina hit N.O., these shrimpers got together, managed to get a contribution of biodiesel from a company in Iowa, got contributions of food stuff from everyone around and set sail. This was American taking care of another American, no questions asked.
The last time I was down at the shrimp docks doing a story about shrimp, the captain was American, but the crew spoke Spanish as they off-loaded the catch.
Once I got into a discussion with a guy that had crewed shrimp boats all his working life, and talking about the death of Social Security, he reasoned that the best way to retire was to commit a federal crime, end up in prison and learn how to play tennis. :P

Originally Posted by SPILive

Judy, once again you cannot be more correct; the richest feudal lords create spider webs with their wealth, and greedily devour everything they can with NO regard for anyone but themselves;

Case in point, if you were an illegal immigrant worker on a Port Isabel shrimp boat, and saw something you did not go along with morally; and you mysteriously died, it would be Precinct One Justice of the Peace Benito Ochoa's job to officially determine how you died;


. . .grandfather always advised, "Know your enemy. . ."

Paul Cunningham is the Town of South Padre Island City Attorney; and he is the attorney for the Economic Development Corporation; and has represented both buyers and sellers in land exchanges between the city and others--often in questionable roles, maybe legal, but definately to his own profitability--and his decisions make profit for him as the owner of the Radison Resort;

While 10% of America is looking for a job, this guy has more than he can spend--and it is not enough. . .

That is a common scenario throughout the United States. City Attorneys double-dipping in economic development, and clearly a situation of the fox watching the hen house. The destruction of the United States has been driven by such attorneys who use their position on the one-hand to defend the actions of the public agency against outrage by the public while lining their own pockets and the pockets of their PayPals with the other.

And really 18% or more of America is looking for a full-time job that pays a wage they can live on. Our country is bankrupt, most people are beginning to realize that, and as soon as a majority does, they'll know what to do. Hopefully we'll have that majority informed before November 2010 armed with candidates on the ballots they can trust, at least enough to stop this disaster and reverse the policies that caused it.

In my opinion, the following steps are our only hope to save our country:

1. stop illegal immigration
2. pass the FairTax
3. protect our trade
4. legalize/regulate/tax under 2 the illegal drug trade
5. drill baby drill

If we don't do at least the first 3 and do it immediately, our country will be crushed by the weight of overpopulation, poverty and unemployment.

REMEMBER THE SPI PD OFFICER NAMED HERNANDEZ THAT CAUSED SUCH A STIR BY PROVIDING DRUGS TO Â*WIFE WHEN WAS OUT OF TOWN AND Â*WENT ON THE E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO LET EVERYONE KNOW WHAT HAD HAPPENED WITH THE OFFICER ARRANGING THE FREE DRUGS FROM THE DRUG DEALER.Â* WHEN IT WAS CAUSING SUCH A BIG PUBLIC PROBLEM THEY LET HIM GO AND HE WENT TO WORK IN P.I. WITH THE CONSATBLE'S OFFICE.Â* I THINK THIS WAS THE FINAL SCANDLE THAT LED TO THE CHIEF'S RESIGNATION - WELL HOLD ON - IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THE SPI PD HAVE REHIRED THIS OFFICER AND HE IS BACK AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE TOWN.Â* Any three of the boa members could instruct the city manager to git rid of him once and for all but do you think Joann will do this?Â* Alita?Â* Courtney?Â* Sam? Rick?Â* I wouldn't bet on it.
Â*
What does this tell us?Â* Well, probably when the scandle has passed by a few months I would look to see Melissa Zamora ( the one who won't provide her reciepts for the cva/cvb ) rehired as a employee of the city.Â* After all, where else could someone like that get a job?Â* Again, all of this is carefully scripted by the city attorney and implemented by the mayor - in my opinion.
Â*
Wish I had good news about this place just once.
Â*
=

Byline: Emma Perez-TreviNo

Jan. 19--Justice of the Peace BennieÂ*OchoaÂ*III is disputing the county record that lists him as an owner of the Pennies from Heaven arcade, a gambling establishment inÂ*PortÂ*Isabel. "Not me,"OchoaÂ*said. "My dad owns it." The judge, whose Precinct 1 includesÂ*PortÂ*Isabel, said he was the manager for Pennies from Heaven for about two years, also while serving as justice of the peace. He said he does not have any interest in the gaming operation, now.Â*OchoaÂ*said his father, BenitoOchoa, has owned the arcade for a number of years. Several attempts to contact his father for comment were not successful. Questioned Friday about ...

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